Fire
by 0WritersBlock0
Summary: Fire is beautiful. It loves us, hurts us, and rebuilds us. This explores the love of one angel and one demon, and how their love embodies the various forms of fire.


Fire assumes infinite forms. Since the day humanity received fire, that holy gift from The One Above, they have coveted it as if it were the embodiment of life itself.

Fire can take any quality, any behavior, any beauty, and change humanity's perception of it within moments.

* * *

1\. Warm like the flickers illuminating a fireplace.

Aziraphale loves like a fireplace. His fire is Crowley. The demon, with all his vices and venom, is the warmth and life that brings Aziraphale joy. Crowley is warm, and soft, and gentle, no matter what defenses he may claim against those. Aziraphale knows they are words of truth.

He knows because whenever the angel has grown sad at the ending of a beautiful story, Crowley whisks him away to the Ritz for more food and indulgence, filling the angel's heart with warmth.

He knows because whenever the angel finds himself heartbroken over the difficult lives of the poor he sees on the streets, Crowley tosses around a few miracles to improve the people's condition. Aziraphale once again glows with joy at seeing humanity's improvement, and a soft smile flutters onto Crowley's lips, a smile that he thinks the angel cannot see.

He knows because when Aziraphale mourns the loss of his human friends from centuries past, Crowley scoops the angel up into powerful, Hell-tempered arms to enfold the blond-haired divine creature in a gentle embrace, soothing the shorter man's pain-mangled mind and brushing away angelic tears with deft fingers.

Crowley gives Aziraphale life and joy and companionship and everything in between.

Six thousand years of companionship, dependence, protection, affection, joy, and _love _, they all come together when the two beings rejoin once again.

And Aziraphale will forever and for always be Crowley's fireplace. Aziraphale is home, safety, sanctuary.

When Crowley's flames dim and flicker, unable to sustain themselves with what's available, Aziraphale nurtures them back to their glory and joy.

When Crowley's flames are nearly extinguished because of others' hate and anger, Aziraphale shelters them deep within him, keeping away all who would want to hurt his flame.

When Crowley's flames lose control and lash out, scorching all in sight, bringing empires and kings to tatters, Aziraphale restrains him enough to protect those who need safety and allow his flame to unleash enough anger to eventually calm down.

Their fireplace gives just as much as it takes. They give away joy and warmth and love, and in return, they only ask for sustenance in the form of protection from the harsh elements of spite and wrath and the nurturing grace of friendship and time spent together with other members of humanity.

2\. Blazing like the flames of a burning forest.

Sometimes they burn.

Crowley has never been particularly good at holding back or restraining himself…except when it comes to Aziraphale.

The day they met, Aziraphale worried. He puttered. He buried himself in concerns and fears about giving away his Heaven-issued fiery sword so that Adam and Eve could protect themselves upon leaving Eden on the orders of the Almighty. The all-encompassing force of Aziraphale's guilt, none could understate. Crowley may have tempted the young Eve to sin, but knowledge was no sin. Not to Crowley, who'd been denied knowledge all his life. So Crowley went up to speak to the only other being inhabiting the lonely garden. And upon hearing the angel's conflict, Crowley barely held himself back from pouncing on Aziraphale and pestering him until the demon knew all there was to know about Aziraphale's motivations for going against the word of God.

Several hundred years later, upon the crucifixion of Christ, Crowley barely held himself back from embracing the angel who so sweetly, so desperately clung to the demon's arm in a plea to stay close. Who held on in hopes of gaining some form of comfort or reassurance from Crowley. The demon allowed Aziraphale to keep him close, but didn't dare initiate any personal contact of his own.

At the first public showing of Hamlet, Crowley barely held himself back from shooting the angel the brightest possible smile to grace this planet. Aziraphale had come to love Shakespeare and his works by then, and while Crowley preferred the plays of happy endings, he resolved to do whatever necessary to make the angel smile. So, he did just that. He promised to make Hamlet a hit show, and Aziraphale beamed like the sun. Oh, how Crowley yearned to return that look. He only allowed himself a small smirk of adoration as he walked away.

In the 1800s, on that bridge, Crowley barely held himself back from getting into an absolute _fight _with the angel. Aziraphale had refused Crowley's request for Holy water. The angel exclaimed he wouldn't give Crowley a suicide pill. All Crowley heard during that argument was Aziraphale's distrust towards the demon, enough distrust to refuse a simple request for a defense system in case other demons came after the two friends.

Upon receiving the thermos of Holy water, Crowley barely held himself back from throwing himself at Aziraphale's feet and begging him. Begging for the angel's love. Begging for the angel's forgiveness. Begging for the angel's companionship. Begging for the angel's presence. Aziraphale had handed Crowley the thermos, and it took all of the demon's will to not crumble at the angel's feet and plead with Aziraphale to stay, to be with him. And the angel left anyways. Of course he did. There was nothing holding Aziraphale back, nothing binding him to Crowley.

And in the year 2019, when Aziraphale experienced a myriad of terrible occurrences involving the archangels, the Four Horsemen, and Satan Himself, Crowley barely held himself back from bringing Heaven and Hell down on his own because of what they did to his angel (Crowley, even to this day, never deduced when Aziraphale went from being _the angel _to being _his angel _). Crowley's unbridled, unrestrained wrath, no one could understate. But he'd be truly damned if he did something his angel would hate him for.

Crowley and Aziraphale burned for each other. Aziraphale's restraint appears pathetic to some, and Crowley's restraint appears godly to some. But they don't care. They won't care. Each restrains himself for the other, aiming to protect and defend, ensure that neither is harmed by the actions of the other. So yes. They restrain, even when they burn.

3\. Flourishing like the fickle, all-encompassing flares that had devastated A. Z. Fell and Co.

Soft lips on sweet skin. Cool hands on heated flesh. Warm eyes on icy cheeks. Their love is like the fire that rages to raze everything around them. While one burns in the cold love of Heaven, the other freezes in the smothering heat of Hell. One yearns to give and worship and love and feel, blasphemous kisses interweaving with unholy words, prayers offered to the higher power that lay with legs wide open and golden eyes pleading for more. The other begs and aches to take, to accept those sacrilegious affections like a saint, blessing the pious devotee with sacred sighs and merciful moans and beautiful breaths, bestowing upon that gentle creature the power to draw the deity to holy Heaven above and sinful Hell below.

One offers hands and tongue and lips and eyes and heart, begging the god to accept all those gifts, praying for the unholy love and avid rapture that only that ineffable being could provide. The other holds open a heart and body marred by God's disapproval, marred by history, marred by the passage of time, marred by hatred, and bares that broken body to the pleading lips that long for supple pale skin and exalted mewls of euphoria.

The two sing in their inferno, wretched wails and celestial cries interloping with the thrashing torments and agonizing strokes associated with their love and copulation. The room seems to writhe with each meeting of skin, reality itself pulsating from the force of their love. Time and space contract and expand as two heavenly bodies reach their ecstasy, pools of gold and earth flickering with their inhuman power.

And suddenly, the entire space around them creaks and moans with the strain of their true natures pressing together in unholy matrimony, human bodies nearly collapsing as the eternal brings razed existence with their love.

Peace. Reality whimpers, keening at the near-deadly danger of the beings' coitus. They themselves also whine, falling together on ebony silken sheets and warm tartan blankets as their minds and hearts chase slumber. One coos and coddles the other, pressing the god towards himself for a loving hug after the exhaustion and exertion of love-making. The other snivels, aureate eyes brim with unshed tears of overstimulation, though a divine smile alights his face. A trembling, narrow hand cups a soft jaw, the rough pad of a war-worn thumb brushing along rounded cheeks. Sweet, kiss-bitten lips hurry forward to press against their favorite companions.

The pairs of lips do not separate completely, merely grazing one another as the god speaks words of love, words of lechery, words of laudation, treating his most beloved disciple with utmost veneration, not an uncommon activity for him. The follower delicately accepts the affections, basking in the voice and glory of his greatest teacher, his greatest lover, his greatest truth.

The fire has long since engulfed them, and now burns differently, flowing along their hearts, rushing through their veins as though God herself had decided to boil them from the inside out for their unhallowed amorousness.

And yet they still smolder, coming together each night to scorch existence with their adoration. And every night, when they meld together to scald a new pattern into the fabric of reality, Heaven and Hell tremor violently. When the fires of love burn so bright, not even the Almighty could dare to extinguish them.

* * *

Fire was given to mankind by Heaven and God, a boon offered for their betterment in this vast world that the Almighty built with all of Her love. But, humanity never saw true fire, never learned its true nature, until life itself encountered the omnipresent supremacy of the love between an angel and a demon, the love between Aziraphale and Crowley.


End file.
